Old Images Return to Kiribati –
and New Ones Emerge

Project Title

Film Documents Archived in Germany and Their Value as Cultural Heritage for a Pacific Atoll Country in an Age of Climate Change

Period

2010–2011

Objectives

The project had two main objectives:

1. The digitization and return of 70 ethnographic film documents, which the German oceanist Dr. Gerd Koch had filmed in the 1960s on Nonouti, Tabiteuea and Onotoa in the Gilbert Islands. The main goal was to return the old films in digitized form (DVD) to the state of Kiribati and to the island communities whose cultural heritage they document.
2. The implementation of a two-part workshop lasting several weeks, which was designed to promote the training and further education of local filmmakers, and to teach them how to produce their own documentaries.

Project members

Consultation: Dr. Elfriede Hermann
Visual Ethnography: Dr. Rolf Husmann
Cultural Anthropology: Dr. Wolfgang Kempf

Funding

Sponsored by The Federal Foreign Office’s Cultural Preservation Programme (External Link).